


Vagaries of Love

by aerye



Category: Nero Wolfe - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:32:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerye/pseuds/aerye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a case that's been troubling Archie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vagaries of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Parhelion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/gifts).



I knew it would be no good to try to talk to Wolfe about it in the middle of everything. There was already enough confusion, what with our prime suspect showing up dead, followed in the usual swift manner by our client coming under suspicion of putting said prime suspect in that condition. No, if I’d brought it up then he would’ve just waved me off, with not inconsiderable agitation on his part, and having bungled the opening salvo I would have found mounting the second front twice as hard. The question had been on my mind though, ever since Gaylord Trent knocked on our door, and now that the case was done, the proper arrests made, and our client’s name cleared (at least publicly; privately, there was damage that could never be undone), I’d made up my mind to have it out with him.

Unfortunately my plan, like a lot of my plans involving Wolfe, had run into a few obstacles. He had invited Lon Cohen over to dinner, which he does every once in awhile just to keep us in good with the press, since he finds them useful now and then. Fritz had really outdone himself for the occasion. We'd started with soup, a consommé Fritz had spent the entire day before making. He'd ladled it over cippolini onions and served it with seared _foie gras_ and toasted brioche. Lon was impressed – which most likely wasn't hard to do – but Wolfe complimented Fritz twice and helped himself to seconds. Venison followed, from a shipment we'd received earlier in the week. Fritz had cooked it in a tart-cherry wine sauce, and served it up with tiny parsnips and bitter greens, and one of the better bottles of red from Wolfe's cellar.

We were working our way through a nice _Epoisses de Bourgogne_ that was melting out over its rind onto the plate, and a bottle of one of Wolfe's coveted pre-War cognacs, when Lon turned to Wolfe and asked what could we tell him about the Trent affair.

The big news had hit the papers: Thompson Trent Aero, one of the top five privately-owned aerodynamics companies, had announced a shake-up in their executive management that was causing a bit of stir in the business pages. After twenty-five years of together building a company from the ground up, Edward Thompson and Gaylord Trent were calling it quits. The announcement said Thompson would keep the manufacturing side of the business - which meant he was getting the company’s cash cow - while Trent was taking with him the less lucrative research and design department. Not that Trent was going to be destitute or anything; that side of the business was still capable of generating a decent amount of cash flow for its owner. Still, the announcement had come out of nowhere and everyone wanted to know what had caused the split. Neither of the principals was talking except to say that it was mutual decision and that each continued to hold the other party in their highest esteem.

That wasn’t the whole story, though, and Lon was good at his job, which was being a reporter. He could smell a bigger story from the other side of Manhattan and it was clear he'd picked up the scent of one now.

“C’mon, Wolfe. I know you know something. I have it on good authority that Trent was your client and that whatever you did for him came right before him and Thompson decided to call it quits, so it has to be related. And there’s the matter of Eddie Jr.’s murder two weeks before - you can’t tell me that didn’t have anything to do with it. Trent was suspected in that, wasn’t he?” I could tell Lon was itching to pull out his pen and pad and write his lead right then and there.

“You speculate.” Wolfe took a moment to savor his mouthful of cognac before he proceeded. You couldn’t rush Wolfe, and much as it irritated Lon, he knew that well enough. “Mr. Trent was neither arrested nor charged in Mr. Thompson Jr.’s death,” Wolfe finally said.

“His murder,” Lon emphasized, leaning forward. “And I don’t speculate - I have a contact in the Westchester DA’s office. They liked him for it; I know that.”

“They misinterpreted the facts and therefore reached the wrong conclusions. It is a weakness of Mr. Anderson’s.”

Wolfe’s previous associations with District Attorney Anderson hadn’t endeared either of them to each other. Wolfe disliked the sloppiness in Anderson’s logic and Anderson disliked being wrong, a condition Wolfe had proved on more than one occasion.

“But you and Goodwin here helped them reach the right ones.”

Wolfe looked at me. We were under no obligation to keep the rest of the story secret. Still, it hadn’t leaked on its own and for personal reasons, I don’t think either of us were interested in being responsible for disclosing the additional details. Lon knew he had his hooks into something though, so he just looked between the two of us, waiting.

“We might have given them some help in that area, yeah,” I finally said. I looked at Wolfe. “Off the record?” I asked, because Lon would just keep poking around if we didn’t tell him and maybe then he would see why telling the whole story wouldn’t help explain anything, except maybe the tragedy that was sometimes love.

“Oh, very well,” he said, frowning and nodding shortly. “Off the record.”

I looked at Lon. “You keep your mouth shut? Doesn’t go beyond these walls?”

“Now what the hell good is that going to do me?” he complained. “Sorry,” he said to Wolfe. Wolfe didn’t like profanity. He didn’t object to it on moral grounds – he just felt it demonstrated a lack of imagination and a failure on the speaker’s part to express himself clearly.

For my part, I shrugged and smiled at him. “Didn’t say it would do you any good but that’s the deal - take it or leave it. You can satisfy your curiosity and keep your mouth shut or we can talk about the Giants. Your choice.”

Lon looked between the two of us again, apparently hoping one of us would get struck by lightening and have a sudden change of heart and offer to spill our guts. That was about as likely as Wolfe taking up tap dancing and Lon realized this pretty quick, giving up and flinging his hands into the air with frustration. “Okay, fine. You win.” He slapped his napkin down on the table, earning himself another frown from Wolfe. “Off the record.”

"We need to take this to the office?" I asked Wolfe. He didn't like discussing business at the table, although technically this wasn't business anymore since the case was finished.

Wolfe shook his head. "The file is closed. And there are still the tarts."

"Right, the tarts." Trust Wolfe to make a decision based on his stomach. I turned back to Lon. "So here's the story."

Gaylord Trent had shown up on the doorstep of the brownstone ten days ago, on a Thursday, badly in need of the services of a good detective, which I’m not ashamed I am even without Wolfe’s brain. With Wolfe’s smarts - well, I’d say there wasn’t much we couldn’t solve.

The story he told us wasn’t a new one. I’d seen plenty, worked plenty of cases like it in my time - an older man falls in love with someone much too young for him, and as a result, makes bad decisions that result in chaos and messy situations for everyone. In Trent’s case though, he’d added a twist: he’d compounded his mistake by falling for a guy, instead of a woman, and then added interest on top of that by picking Edward Thompson the Junior, the son of his business partner, as the target of his affections. It was a situation chock full of landmines: how Trent ever thought he could keep the affair a secret from Edward Sr. was beyond my powers of deduction, and if Edward Sr. found out there would have been hell to pay, both personally and professionally. And if word got leaked to the public, well, that wouldn’t have been any prettier. Trent was rich, so that would’ve softened the landing a bit, but the fact was, queer was queer - he was looking at a long fall and a messy landing, and a lot of the doors he was used to walking through would have been closed to him, and for good. Still, he was a man in love and men in love do crazy things, so chances were he would have continued to risk it all, if it hadn’t been for the letters.

“The letters?” Lon leaned back so that Fritz could put a ginger pear tart in front of him. Ginger pear tarts were one of Fritz’s best, and I held up talking until I had one in front of me as well, with a nice dollop of mascarpone on top.

“Yeah, letters. Three of them to be exact. Nothing ambitious, you understand, the writer was no Shakespeare - “

Wolfe gave a grunt, indicating his complete agreement.

“ - but they got to the point fast. First one said the sender knew Trent’s secret. Two days later came the next letter, this one with proof.”

“Proof?” Lon’s eyebrows crawled into his hairline.

I couldn’t help a grin at Lon’s panic. “A couple of photographs - not very salacious but enough to cook his goose. The third came a week later - “

“Let me guess,” Lon interrupted. “Asking for money.”

“You got it. And not a pittance either. When it came to money, our blackmailer was very ambitious. He asked for five hundred thousand, and he wanted it in forty-eight hours.”

Lon whistled, impressed. Wolfe frowned. He didn’t like whistling in general and particularly not at the dinner table. “So that was the job, the thing he hired you and Wolfe for? To figure out who was blackmailing him and help him keep his secret?”

“Hmm, well it was a little more complicated than that. See, Trent was sure that the blackmailer was Eddie Jr.”

“The kid? Why?”

“Well, it seemed Eddie Jr.’s behavior had been getting more and more erratic. Weird phone calls, missed appointments - that sort of thing. At first Trent suspected an affair - those are the usual signs - but once the letter arrived he started to think maybe it had something to do with the blackmail.”

“Again - why would Eddie Jr. want to blackmail him? The kid is queer,” and there was just that bit of a curl to his lip that made my stomach go cold at the same time my temper got a little warmer, “which he definitely wouldn’t want to risk anyone finding out, and he’s rich - he’s going to inherit Daddy’s company and all his money. So why the blackmail? He gets caught, his secret is out as well as Trent’s.”

“You gotta remember the affair was a May-December kind of thing," I said, trying not to put too much into my voice. "So Trent was never too secure about his place in Eddie Jr.’s affections anyway. He knew Eddie was afraid of how his father would react, if he ever found out. In fact, he knew there was a good chance Edward Sr. would disinherit the kid if he ever found out. So when Eddie started acting odd, and then there were the letters - you can see how it makes sense, or would have anyway, to Trent. If the kid didn't love him in the first place, and he was worried about Edward Sr. disinheriting him - ”

“Then blackmailing Trent to secure himself a nice nest egg might make sense. So I can see why it made sense to the Westchester DA's office,” Lon added, trying to get in a shot at Wolfe.

Wolfe was unimpressed. “That Mr. Trent could not properly divine the identity of the blackmailer, caught up as he was in his fear and anxiety and sense of betrayal, is understandable. That Mr. Anderson, with all of the resources and the evidence readily available to him, could not, is incomprehensible, reprehensible, and borders on idiocy.”

“Right.” Lon rolled his eyes and turned back to me. “So who turned out to be the blackmailer?”

“Sirus Abernathy.”

“The guy who croaked Eddie Jr.?”

I could see Wolfe’s fingers tighten around his glass and hoped the crystal was up to the pressure. It was part of a set that Wolfe particularly liked. “The same.”

“The same guy the papers have been reporting had been angling for a piece of Thompson Trent Aero for years.”

“The very same,” I confirmed.

Lon ran the facts through his brain and although Lon’s good at this sort of thing, he still came up empty. He shook his head. “All right. Take me through it.”

“Trent was right," I said, "well, partially right," I added, trying to avert another swipe at Wolfe about Anderson. "Eddie was involved in the blackmailing scheme, at least at the beginning. Eddie was the bait. He was supposed to seduce Trent and get him in a compromising position so that Abernathy could reel him in.”

“So they would split five hundred thousand?” Lon still looked confused.

I shook my head and topped off my glass. “Nah. Abernathy didn’t give a damn about the money. Remember - he wanted into Thompson Trent. But neither Thompson nor Trent would sell. Private corporation, private stocks, so he couldn’t find a way in on the open market - “

“ - but if he could create a situation in which Trent had to come by a lot of cash fast, he could leverage that to force him to sell his shares. Abernathy gets his controlling interest. Eddie gets the money to tell Daddy off if he needs to. Good plan,” Lon said, impressed. Lon always respected talent, even the unsavory kind. “I take it things didn’t go as planned.”

“Correct.” Wolfe didn’t like plodding, and this was plodding. He wasn't inclined to make the process any easier for Lon, even if it would make it quicker. When Wolfe didn’t continue immediately, Lon made a gesture with his hand, a sort of "hurry up already" kind of thing. “So what went wrong?”

Wolfe frowned. “What ‘went wrong’ Mr. Cohen, is that Mr. Abernathy did not allow for the vagaries of the human heart.”

Lon sighed and looked at me. “Which means?”

“Which means Abernathy didn’t figure Eddie Jr.'s falling in love into his plans. Trent wasn't wrong - him and the kid had found something real. When Eddie realized it, he tried to back out of the deal. That’s when he started acting funny - he was trying to talk Abernathy out of it. He was acting guilty because he was guilty, but to his credit he was trying to get Abernathy to back off of the blackmail scheme, saying he would try to talk Trent into just selling his shares.”

Lon barked out a laugh. “Oh, like that would work. Thompson and Trent built that company from the ground up. They started with a couple of thousand, an engine design, and a hangar. Fat chance Trent was going to sell off a life’s work.”

“Right - not unless he had to in order to save himself from total ruin. Predictably, Abernathy preferred a sure thing to a fat chance, so he told the kid that if he backed out, he would tell Edward Sr. everything anyway, which would ruin the kid and Trent. Eddie arranged a meeting to try one last time to talk him out of it. I guess Abernathy finally realized the kid was a loose canon, so he killed him.”

“But Trent came under suspicion.”

“Well, Abernathy was no idiot. He planted a letter on the kid’s body, another blackmail demand, addressed and stamped and ready to send to Trent. The police found that and then the others, and promptly tried to open and close the case on the spot.”

Lon grinned. “But Trent was your client so - “

“We had promised Mr. Trent we would identify the blackmailer," Wolfe interrupted. "We were still engaged to deliver on that promise. It was serendipitous that in determining Mr. Abernathy was the blackmailer, we were also able to establish to the reluctant satisfaction of the Westchester DA that Mr. Trent was innocent of murder.”

“And you did that how exactly?”

“With reason and intelligence. Unlike Mr. Anderson, who was content to leap to a precipitous conclusion based on limited evidence.”

I jumped in. “Eddie Jr.’s murder meant that he was either part of the blackmail scheme or that he’d found out about it. Either way, that meant his accomplice had to be someone close to either him or Trent, or both. That conclusion was supported by the outrageous blackmail demand.”

“How do you figure that?” Lon was back to confused.

“Think it through," Wolfe said, now completely impatient. "A stranger would not have known Mr. Trent could raise that large a sum of cash in such a limited period of time. Mr. Trent was well off but five hundred thousand constituted a significant portion of his assets, most of which were non-liquid. Selling those assets would take time. It became clear the object of the exercise wasn’t the money; it was the transfer of the Thompson Trent shares. We briefly investigated whether Mr. Thompson the senior could not have purchased the shares, since that might have implicated him to some degree, even if the scheme involved his son. However, his assets are as non-liquid as his partner's - neither man lives extravagantly and both tend to reinvest profits into the company. Therefore, even if he wanted full control of the company - and there was no evidence he desired that - it would not have been possible for him to raise the cash necessary to buy the shares.”

“On the other hand,” I said, picking up the story, “Abernathy had been chomping at the bit for years, trying to get a foot in the door. Abernathy had the money to buy the shares - he just couldn’t get either Thompson or Abernathy to sell them. He was close enough to the Thompsons to know about Eddie’s strained relationship with his father. How and when he found out both men were homosexuals we never figured out, but apparently he did and he saw the situation as an opportunity to finally get what he wanted.”

And once Wolfe figured out Abernathy's involvement, it was just a matter of shaking his alibi, which hadn't proven hard since Abernathy had planned for blackmail, not murder. Once we had proof of that, Wolfe had me bring all the likely suspects and Anderson to his office, and with some careful questioning the whole plot folded like a deck of cards at his feet. Normally I took a lot of pleasure in these sessions, watching Wolfe dismantle everyone's secrets piece by piece, but this time it’d been painful. I'd found it hard to watch the shifting expressions on Trent’s face, part grief and part guilt, and above all his anguished joy in realizing Eddie Jr. had loved him. Edward Sr., already reeling from the loss of his only son, looked devastated, with each new revelation hitting him like a blow. When he walked into Wolfe’s office he’d only lost a son - by the time he'd left, he'd lost a partner and his belief in his son.

I would have felt sorrier for him if I didn’t think some of those wounds were self-inflicted.

Lon stayed for another hour. He and Wolfe got into an argument about labor unions, and I’m pretty sure when Lon walked out the door they were both thinking smugly that they’d won. I checked in with Fritz to see if he needed any help in the kitchen. He was busy putting together a marinade for some lamb shanks that he planned to braise the next day for lunch. He didn’t need me but I took the opportunity to drink a glass of milk and eat another one of the ginger pear tarts, so that by the time I got back to Wolfe’s office, he was already ensconced in his chair, reading.

“I’m going to take a walk,” I said. “Quick turn around the block before I turn in.”

He looked up and I figured everything was written on my face, which I would normally mind because it can be a liability in my line of work, but with Wolfe everything had always been different.

He inclined his head. God forbid the man should move more than absolutely required. “Make sure you dress warmly,” he said. “There is a chill in the air.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, already making my way to the hallway. “I’m just going around the block.”

“Very well,” he said, with the usual thread of disapproval. The idea of leaving the brownstone just to take a walk around the block - no emergency, no urgent need to leave the comfort of his custom made chair - was as incomprehensible to him as the ability of his brain to function after seven quarts of beer every afternoon was to me. As in most things, we tolerated each other's foibles. “Oh, and Archie,” he called out, halting me before I was completely out of the office, “stop by my room when you get back, before you retire.”

It could mean a new case - Wolfe often gave me orders the night before when he wanted me to do some legwork. Ninety-nine percent of the time, though, I’d already met the client. Had in fact, ushered the client into the office and taken notes as they explained the situation to Wolfe.

There was a chance that it was a case - but it wasn’t. “Okay, fine,” I said, and if there was a thread of heat in my voice, well, it wasn’t anything I could help and nothing he didn’t know anyway.

“Very well. Wear a scarf!” he yelled after me, as I went into the hallway and pulled on my coat.

Outside the air was chilly but not cold. It was fall, advancing quickly into winter but it wasn’t there yet. There was mist in the air, causing the streetlights to glow as I made my way down the sidewalk. I turned at the corner and without really thinking ducked into a bar, where I had a quick shot of bourbon that told me - as if I didn’t already know - how off balance I was feeling. I followed that with another glass of milk, a combination that would have had most bartenders looking at me funny. The guys in this place knew me, though, so it didn’t raise any eyebrows, and I was back out on the street in no time, although it had taken long enough that Wolfe would know I’d stopped in someplace.

I finished my loop, down the street to West 34th, and then back down and up again to 35th. I locked up when I got back. Fritz had probably retired to his room and Horstmann was almost certainly already asleep, dreaming of Wolfe’s orchids. I climbed the stairs and went to my room, seeing the sliver of light under Wolfe’s door as I passed. I took a shower and put on my pajamas and robe and then made my way back down the hallway, tapping lightly at Wolfe’s door before I opened it.

Wolfe was in bed, sitting like a mountain of yellow silk surrounded by the black silk sea of his sheets and comforter. He was reading again, but as I leaned against the doorframe he set the book aside.

“Are you coming in or leaving?" he asked. "You know I dislike hovering.”

I came far enough into the room to close the door behind me and leaned back against it again. “I didn’t think it was hovering if I was this far away.”

“Hovering doesn’t require proximity,” he said impatiently. He studied me for a moment. “This case disturbed you.”

“No,” I said, too quickly for it not to be true. “Not disturbed, I wouldn't say disturbed,” I corrected him quickly. “Unsettled, maybe,” I conceded.

He silence was clear enough direction to continue. “It hit too close to home, maybe.”

“Older man, younger man?” Wolfe asked.

It was my turn to nod. "And not just that."

“I see. Are you here to tell me you set out to seduce me in order to blackmail me? Or that you have not given me your trust, such that you would feel able to share with me the circumstances if you were you to find yourself in trouble? Do you doubt the affection I feel for you? Or is it that you doubt I am confident in your affection for me?”

When he put it that way, it was hard not to feel like an idiot. Still - “Lon would have walked out on us if he knew. You know that. You think you’d still have clients knocking at your door if what we did behind this door was public knowledge? You don’t think Cramer would jump on the chance to arrest us?”

“What individuals choose to do behind their bedroom door is never appropriate for the public to know. It is a conceit and a failure on the part of the public to feel they have the right to demand that knowledge.”

“You’re purposely missing the point,” I said, getting a little exasperated.

“No, Archie, I am simply refusing to concede the point. Perhaps what you say is true, perhaps not. Perhaps Mr. Cohen would care - or perhaps he would not care enough if his connection to us continued to provide him with access to information any competent reporter should be able to ferret out for himself. Perhaps Inspector Cramer would arrest us. Perhaps he would examine his case closure rate and determine he was better off on the other side of that door. Perhaps clients would not come seeking assistance. Or perhaps they would place their need for justice above their petty prejudices. It does not matter, Archie. Or rather, it only matters if you allow it. Will you allow it?” he asked me.

And that was the question, wasn't it? I could let us continue as we were, or I could force us both to retreat. He was placing the decision squarely in my hands. “Okay, I won’t if you won’t,” I said finally, crossing over to him. I leaned down and kissed him, taking my time with it. I knew I’d want him around me, in me that night. All night. As often as possible and into the morning, if I could have it. It seemed I could.

“Then there is no cause for concern,” he said, touching his hand to my cheek. “Now - will you continue to hover or will you come to bed?”

I came to bed.


End file.
